Hattie Morahan, left, with Susannah Wise in Carrie Cracknell's staging of A Doll's House at the Young Vic. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

It is small in size, but big on innovation. The Young Vic made its name worldwide as one of the UK's most exciting producing theatres, offering fresh versions of the classics, new plays and emerging talent alongside established stars. Now it is breaking more boundaries, with ambitious plans to shoot feature films.

Other theatre and opera companies have had success showing their existing productions in cinemas, filmed by external producers. But the Young Vic is taking the concept further by making original films of plays, using most of the stage version's cast and crew.

Two such movies are in development. The first, to be shot in Kinshasa, is a version of its acclaimed A Season in the Congo, involving two of the British film industry's biggest names: actor Chiwetel Ejiofor and director Joe Wright. Aimé Césaire's play is an epic retelling of the 1960 Congo rebellion and the assassination of the charismatic political leader Patrice Lumumba, played by Ejiofor. Ahead of its shoot, a spin-off short film based on the play will be released in November.

The second feature is an adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House, loosely inspired by Carrie Cracknell's staging which is now playing in the West End to packed houses. It has won rave reviews and awards for its star Hattie Morahan, whose mesmerising performance as a woman driven to abandon her children has elevated her to the front rank of British actors.

The Young Vic's venture into film-making has been inspired by the extraordinary success of a collaboration with the Guardian, for which directors, writers and actors were commissioned to make short, "bold" spin-off films of their stage productions. The shorts play on the websites of the Guardian/Observer and the Young Vic. Each has attracted tens of thousands of views – already exceeding the numbers who can fit into the London theatre in a year. Another two are due for release.

David Lan, Young Vic artistic director, told the Observer that the company likes to create opportunities for people to do "bold" and "crazy things": "Our new crazy thing is to say to our theatre directors who've never worked in film, 'OK, you've done the show, now make a film.'"

Bringing in more people is not the principal reason for the film project, as the theatre has averaged 95% capacity in recent years – a record 136,000 people filled seats last year. Instead, its aim is to give audiences an opportunity to see work they might not otherwise see. Lan applauds the National Theatre Live programme, in which filmed productions have been seen in cinemas by some 1.8 million people worldwide since 2009. Later this month Nicholas Hytner's Othello will be broadcast live.

Alan Stacey, the Young Vic's commercial director, said: "We've looked at NT Live, and wouldn't rule out that model. But we wanted to carve out our own niche with these short films. As far as we can tell, no one else is doing them yet."

One of those shorts was inspired by A Doll's House, when Morahan reprised her depiction of Nora Helmer, but this time 130 years later as a modern-day woman suffocated by today's pressures.

Monday sees the release of the fourth short. Titled Connection, it stars Jude Law, who has a long association with the Young Vic as an actor and fundraiser. He was taken to productions as a child and believes that the experience played "an important part" in his dream of becoming an actor.

Connection is a collaboration between the Young Vic and the Belarus Free Theatre, a company that Law supports. It was founded in 2005 by husband-and-wife team Nikolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada in response to state censorship, in the only country in Europe that still practises the death penalty. The couple fled Belarus in 2010, fearing political imprisonment, and were granted asylum in Britain.

At the heart of the film is a true story. The couple were travelling back to Belarus when one of them received a call from Natalia's mother warning them that they faced arrest. Stacey said: "The comic balancing point of the [film's] story is a parallel story, where Jude Law has just arrived on a flight. He rings his mum and finds he can't go back to his house because the paparazzi are outside.

"Half of it, Nikolai's section, is in Belarusian. So the whole point is that they're miscommunicating with each other until they eventually find a connection."